As bells rang on television to signal a change in the results, the Matiba family celebrated the latest results at their home in northern Johannesburg. With most of the votes counted, the ANC had just 41 percent of the vote.
“Great!” said Bhul Mativa, pointing at the TV screen.
“Good,” agreed her husband, Katu Mativa.
“They should continue to decline because they are too arrogant,” Matiba said.
On a Friday evening in South Africa, as winter approached, a couple sat in front of a cozy fire and watched news coverage of a watershed election: For the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994, Nelson Mandela's former party failed to win a majority of the vote in a national election.
The African National Congress (ANC) remains the leading party in the May 29 general election, but its latest vote tally is widely seen as a political defeat and a rebuke from voters like Matiba who are resentful of the only party they've known since the end of apartheid. In the last general election in 2019, the ANC won 57% of the vote. Its drop to 41% in this one means the party lost its majority in parliament, which elects the president. Now it will need to work with smaller opposition parties, like the one Matiba voted for instead of the ANC.
Breaking with family tradition and their own past voting habits, Buhle and Khatu Matiba decided not to vote for the ANC, a party they describe as “arrogant” and corrupt. Matiba, 34, and 36, belong to the largest group of registered voters in South Africa, where voters aged 30 to 39 make up almost a quarter of registered voters, and the slightly older aged 40 to 49 make up more than a fifth.
The number of voting-age South Africans born after apartheid in 1994 is the lowest ever registered, and those who endured the worst of the apartheid regime are aging. In fact, the generation that experienced South Africa's post-apartheid highs and economic growth, followed by its decline and disappointment, is disgusted by the ANC.
“They may have had a plan to fight apartheid, but they had no plan for the economy,” Matiba said.
They live in Gauteng, the most populous and wealthiest province in the country, where urban black voters are angry at the ANC government for failing to provide even the most basic services. Matiba and his wife, who work in banking and IT, live on a tree-lined street in a formerly whites-only suburb of Johannesburg.
It was Matiba's mother, a doctor, who persuaded him to try the ANC again in the last election. As a black South African who came of age during apartheid, Matiba's mother was only allowed to attend two medical schools. Now, her son and his wife can choose the best in South Africa. Although the couple voted for the ANC in 2019, Buhle and Khatu Matiba said they could not support the ANC because of the future of their three-year-old son.
Matiba's father worked as a security guard but made sure his daughter attended a well-funded former white public school in Cape Town. The family moved from Soweto to the wealthier north, where Matiba attended a similar school. Now they have lost faith in public schools and are budgeting for a private school for their son, an added expense in a time of soaring inflation and rolling blackouts.
The power outages have not only made life more expensive, but also more dangerous. At night, the streets are dark and deserted because street lights have not been turned on for months. Their home is conveniently located near a shopping mall and stores, but crime has made the business district a no-go zone. In 2020, robbers broke into the Mativas' home and stole their belongings. Public safety was their top concern when they voted last week.
“Crime is a big problem for us,” Matiba said.
They chose the Patriotic Union, a political party founded nearly a decade ago by a former convict turned businessman who promised to take a tough stance on crime, and whose leader, Gayton McKenzie, wants to reinstate the death penalty for serious crimes.
Matiba was also impressed by Mackenzie's year as mayor of a rural district in South Africa's Western Cape, where he tried to bring jobs and improve infrastructure to the town but, most importantly, didn't take a salary – something that struck Matiba, who remembers the scenes of extreme poverty he saw when he often drove through the area as a child.
Looking at the results of this week's election, she lamented that the Eastern Cape, the poor province where her parents grew up, still voted for the ANC.
“I think they're more afraid of racism and apartheid than they are of poverty,” she said.
Matiba voted for the second-largest white-led party, the Democratic Alliance, in the lower-ranking elections.
“If the ANC had fixed the basic issues like infrastructure, policing and education, I would probably vote for them,” he said.
The couple are optimistic about the election outcome but are concerned about the instability of the coalition government, after Julius Malema said his party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, would demand a role in the treasury as a condition for cooperation, and which advocates nationalizing the central bank.
“It's so that he can manage the funds,” Matiba said.
“Will anything good come out of that?” my wife asked.
“It's nothing,” cried her husband.
“Thank God you got fourth place,” she said of Mr Malema's party.
Still, Malema's party is making inroads with the urban black middle class, though not to the same extent as newcomer Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), led by former ANC president Jacob Zuma. Matiba has watched with amazement as MK has risen in the polls to become the third-largest party. Yet, like other breakaway ANC parties, she would prefer it to be forgotten.
“More than anything, the ANC has been humbled,” she said.